Chronicles in Ordinary Time 113: Pay No Attention to the Man…

“We wanna fix up our infrastructure bigly. That includes – and who’s better at that stuff than me? Believe me. Hey I don’t need your vote anymore, but I’m telling you I’ve very good at that. That’s right I don’t need your vote, can you imagine that? Four years, I’ll need your vote.”
Donald Trump, 12/11/2016

Approximately 59% of the eligible voters in the US chose to vote. Approximately 40% of the eligible voters chose to abstain. Of the voters who chose to vote, approximately 48% voted for Hillary Clinton; approximately 46% voted for Donald Trump.

Approximately 27% of the American voters sold the country to Donald Trump.

“He’ll shake things up”

“He’s going to run the country like a business”

Yeah. He’s going to run the country like a business. He’s going to run the country like HIS business; he’s not going to run the country like YOUR business. It appears, from the words of ‘The Great and Powerful Donald,” he now owns one of the world’s largest businesses, ‘Trump America’.

From what the talking heads have said, as they justify his selections for his cabinet, the primary quality they have is that they are “successful”.

Successful at what?

Successful at making money? Is that what being “successful” in America has come to mean?

The reality is that we don’t even know if ‘The Great and Powerful Donald” IS successful…We know that he has a lot of property with his name on it, property all over the world. But since we spent all of our energy focusing on Hillary’s email, we never really found out if Donald is even solvent. He has been afraid to show us his tax returns. Given his out-of-court settlement for his Trump University scam, and the cost of the election campaign, he might have run out of cash…until this last couple of weeks, when his business capital has expanded mightily, cashing in on “President-Elect”. Now that he’s been elected [in theory—the Electoral College has not voted yet; he has not won ANY Electoral Votes, they are merely committed to him], he has absolutely no reason to show us his financial records.

He apparently plans to charge the Secret Service a million dollars a year to protect him—the cost of renting a floor of Trump Tower, in New York, where he plans to do much of his business during his time in office. He only wants National Security Briefings once a week; does this mean he really only plans on being in the White House once a week?

His apparent selection for Secretary of State is a man who has serious financial ties to Russia—‘he knows all the players’. His proposed selection for the Environmental Protection Agency is a man who is committed to ‘de-regulating’ the EPA—meaning, getting rid of all of those pesky rules that prevent Corporate America from making a profit.

“Air pollution in India is so bad that it kills half a million people every year…”

The Washington Post, May, 2016

“New Delhi is the most polluted city on Earth right now…” CNN November 2016

“China tops WHO list for deadly outdoor air pollution…” The Guardian, September 2016

“Paris winter air pollution is worst in 10 years…” France 24, December 2016

Even if one is mind-boggled enough to doubt that “Climate Change” exists, such as people like Donald Trump, the reality is that the air in China, the air in India, the air in Paris…

IS OUR AIR.

There is only one AIR on planet Earth.

The polluted air of the other major land masses on Earth will soon find its way here. There is nowhere else for it to go. Particulates will pollute the ground we walk on. The Earth’s vegetation will convert the carbon dioxide to oxygen; but we are rapidly defoliating the Earth. The plants won’t scrub the toxins from the air; the heavier toxins will enter the ground or cover the buildings and the pavement, or land in the water.

When the 2017 EPA Director comes into office, what will happen to the DAPL; and the one victory for America’s First People in 200+ years of history?
What will happen when the Missouri River is polluted by petroleum? What will happen to the aquifer under the Dakotas, when it is polluted with petroleum?

We can’t drink petroleum. I guess we’ll have to buy water from Nestle’s…

There are dead places at the bottom of Earth’s oceans—places where nothing will live again. Sea life can’t drink petroleum, either.

Trump’s cabinet is being filled with people from Goldman Sachs—the very people Trump complained were Hillary’s allies.

It seems that 27% of the American voters chose to ignore the character of the man. We were told about his character; but his character apparently wasn’t as important as the claims he was making during his campaign. “Lock Her Up!” was a major claim; one he now says was ‘for show’. What other campaign ‘promises’ were simply for show?

I grew up in the fifties and sixties, being told that Character was the most important quality in being an American. When I came to Christ, I was told that Character is the most important quality of a follower of Jesus.